TD 20 Samples The Best?

[Bob Vinsick]

I have a Roland electronic drum kit and a TD20 module. Since I bought Superior Drummer, I almost never use any of the sounds in the TD20. No comparision. The other drum samples that I heard is good is Steven Slate drums.

[jlipoth]

Roland is still lagging in the sample quality department. They need to make drum modules that partner with one of the companies that specializes in samples:

Roland TD-12 sound vs Superior Drummer 2.0 - YouTube

I know that the TD20 is a better model, but Roland makes their samples in a similar way. Notice how the decay of the TD12 sounds are not quite right, and how exaggerated the rim-shot sound is. With SD2, the ROOM mics are real mics in the room that the drums were sampled. Also the cymbals on SD2 will have a more natural feel:

Superior Drummer 2.0 - NAMM 08 Demo PART1 - YouTube
The making of the Superior Drummer 2.0 Sound Libraries - YouTube

The Superior Drummer series will give you the closest thing to walking into a good studio, having a good engineer, and recording real drums.

I'd also recommend Steven Slate Drums. They are not quite as "realistic" in a sense, but in exchange, they are basically mix ready (ie they have already been EQ'd etc). Lot's of pro guys use his samples layered on top of real drums when mixing. They are really something special....


If you prefer the SD type sound, but you are on a budget, then EZdrummer is decent too....but not as good...

[JohnRick]

Are you kidding? The samples in the TD20 are not even up to par with the ones in my kit (Yamaha DTX900), let alone the sample libraries available today. Anyway - yes, your best bet is to go with external sample libraries for the sheer sound (which I always do). A few already mentioned:

- Superior Drummer & diff. expansions. A must-have basically. One of the best. The Metal Foundry expansion, along with the custom&vintage expansion is a winner.
- Steven Slate drums seems to have a large following. Though doing great samples they never stuck to me, but I'm sure they're solid
- Addictive drums (another one from Sweden) - really light on your harddrive, and the GUI is extremely user friendly. The sound is also great when playing. I can find it's a bit to "gritty" at times though, even with all the processing off.
- Studio Drummer (from Native Instruments) is actually my favorite right now. Can't describe why, but it has a really believable sound. Probably got a lot to do with the room, the kits were recorded in.
- Abbey Road drums (also from NI) is also super. Mainly the 60s and the 70s kit IMO.
- Ocean Way drums from Sonic Reality. Been around a long time and is also a sample library run by Kontakt (as the two just mentioned above from NI). Gigantic in size, but really, really good samples. Not everyone's cup of tea though.
- Mixosaurus. Maybe an awkward name, but the producer has made a sample library of appr. 120 GB if I remember correctly, and that's only ONE kit. Qulity in absurdum.

...and these are just a few.

[cavern]

SSD 4.0 kills any Roland sample.I had the TD10 and 20 with expansion,not even close...4.0 EX is only $100.

[Eclectic1]

Thanks a lot for all your amazing replies! It took a long time to research and really figure out which drum sample library I wanted and I finally got Superior Drummer. I also bought four of the Toontrack SDX Expansion Packs, which were on sale at Audiodeluxe:

Metal Foundry SDX
Music City USA SDX
New York Studios Vol.2 SDX
Roots Sticks SDX

When you play these kits, with the unlimited sample option enabled, they are truly incredible! The first time I A/B'ed Superior Drummer against the samples of the TD20 I was blown away! Combined with the amazing SDX expansion packs, I've got all I need for drums. Their Electronic Drum (MIDI Mapping) presets also meant that MIDI mapping wasn't needed, which btw was seriously easy in the plugin. Last of all the Routing of the audio to different channel strips within my DAW, was all sorted for me. The only thing I had to do was to create and assign some busses. Finally the amount of velocity layers, samples for each velocity layer and the positional sensing make these drum kits seriously realistic.

The only negative is that when you want to use kit pieces from different kits in your sample libraries (If you have expansion packs), you need to assign these as separate drums and they don't get included in the Overheads and room mics. This seems logical as all the sample are recorded with the natural room reverberation in the room mics at that time and all the Sample Library were recorded in a different studio at a different date. The other negative is that you can't import sample libraries from other manufactures, but the sample libraries included are more than you would ever need for drums.

As you can see I'm seriously impressed by this software.